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It’s official: Modi picked for Varanasi, Jaitley for Amritsar

Modi was quick to launch his campaign by seeking to establish a connect with Varanasi. He tweeted to say that it was an honour for him to fight from the holy city.

TNN | Updated: Mar 16, 2014, 07:03 IST

09:29

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NEW DELHI: BJP on Saturday formally announced the candidature of its PM candidate Narendra Modi for Varanasi, potentially setting the stage for a battle royale with AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal who has vowed to challenge him in any constituency outside Gujarat.
AAP sources said Kejriwal’s candidature from Varanasi is on the cards, though there was no formal announcement.

Modi was quick to launch his campaign by seeking to establish a connect with Varanasi. He tweeted to say that it was an honour for him to fight from the holy city.

The sitting MP from Varanasi and party veteran Murli Manohar Joshi has been shifted to Kanpur in apparent disregard of his resistance.

Those whose nominations were cleared include party chief Rajnath Singh who will contest from Lucknow : a decision which has been taken in defiance of the desire of sitting MP Lalji Tandon to stay put. Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley has replaced former cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu in Amritsar to contest his first direct election.

Rao Inderjit Singh, who had won the Gurgaon seat on Congress ticket, will contest as BJP nominee. He will be pitted against AAP leader Yogendra Yadav. The party has selected Dr Mahesh Sharma, a sitting MLA, for Gautam Buddh Nagar seat which covers Noida.

Other important candidates includes actor Kiron Kher who will be taking on AAP’s Gul Panang and Congress’s Pawan Bansal in Chandigarh, Shatrughan Sinha who has been retained at Patna despite strong resistance from Bihar unit and Uma Bharti who will be fighting the Jhansi seat.

Uma’s fellow Lodh leader and former UP chief minister Kalayan Singh’s Etah seat has been given to his son Rajveer Singh, while Varun Gandhi will be contesting from Sultanpur as his mother returns to the family stronghold of Pilibhit.

The decision on which seat Modi will contest from in Gujarat will be taken on the Wednesday

The leadership was keen that he contested from a seat in UP, reckoning that this will be a boost for the prospects of party’s candidates in the key battleground state which contributes 80 members to Lok Sabha. Varanasi is the nerve centre for east UP which accounts for 32 seats. The proximity of the city, which occupies a special significance in Sangh Parivar’s scheme of things because being one of the 12 top holy spots for devotees of Lord Shiva, to Bihar only enhances its political criticality.

It is significant that Modi chose to stick to it as his second constituency outside Gujarat despite Kejriwal’s declared intent to take him on, and a belated effort by Congress to the shift of Joshi as an affront to Brhamins who constitute an influential chunk of the electorate.

Although there was no immediate response from AAP to BJP’s late night decision to field Modi from Varanasi, sources in the party said there was a strong likelihood of Kejriwal taking the field against BJP’s PM candidate. However, sources said that the final call will be that of political affairs committee of the rookie outfit. They said the body had earlier decided that no sitting MLA will be given the LS ticket, and that it alone was competent to reverse the stand.

The announcement after a marathon meeting which cleared 58 seats for UP, also marks a belated assertion by the leadership against the much publicized rumblings of discontent over the selection of nominees by the Modi- led party. Joshi’s acquiescence to the diktat to shift to Kanpur stood in stark contrast to the resistance he showed when he questioned Rajnath Singh about the reports saying that he was set to be replaced by Modi.

The leadership has also shrugged off the resistance from the sitting Lucknow MP Tandon who publicly declared that he would vacate the seat only for Modi.

Jaitley’s presence in the Amritsar arena is significant for the important leader who was often taunted by his detractors for not having faced the electorate. A win will take care of a deficiency in an otherwise imprsssive CV against the backdrop of a perceived groundswell for BJP.

The next meeting of the election committee will also take up Gandhinagar seat which party stalwart L K Advani has represented since 1991. Although a strong section in the Sangh Parivar had earlier felt that it was time the former deputy PM bowed out of the LS arena, the idea was given up in view of his disinclination.

Although the shift of Joshi to Kanpur suggests that the leadership is finally getting into the assertive mode, the re-nomination of Shatrughan for Patna Saheb signals that it may not like to press its luck too far at Gandhinagar.

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